Peanut Butter Stuffed Chocolate Cookies

My son and my nephew, Tank, are both the same age, and both attend the same local high school. My kids normally take their lunches to school, but Tank has to choose. Sometimes he packs his own lunch, and sometimes he takes money for food.

He normally chose to spend his money on a slice of pizza. Only, he didn’t enjoy the pizza. At. All. One day, he took his pizza, sat next to The Fruitarian, and said, “Another day, another terrible pizza!” We still can’t figure out why he kept buying it, if he hated it so much!

Later in the year, The Fruitarian purchased a slice of that pizza himself, and reported back to us. “That pizza really is terrible!” He had to force himself to eat half of it, so he wouldn’t be too hungry the rest of the school day.

I’ll be holding Tank’s birthday cookies to a higher standard. When I asked him what he wanted, Tank had the flavor combination all worked out.

He has seen his siblings get their own cookies for their birthdays, {remember these? These? And these?} so I suspect he had been giving it some thought before he talked to me.

I was only too happy to give him exactly what he asked for. And, truth be told, I was kind of excited to sample one myself! Because chocolate and peanut butter are amazing.

I chose to use a cake mix for the cookies, just to keep it simple. When cookies involve extra steps, like frosting, cutting, or stuffing, it’s nice to make at least some of those steps easy.

If you prefer not to use a cake mix, a regular chocolate cookie recipe like this one would work just as well. This is also an easy recipe to adapt for gluten free baking, using a gluten free cake mix, and gluten free powdered sugar to mix with the peanut butter.

My real goal with this cookie is to get Tank to say, “Another day, another terrific cookie!” Think I’ll succeed?

In a separate small bowl, combine peanut butter with powdered sugar. It should form a crumbly mixture.

Scoop a spoonful of cookie dough into your hand, and flatten the middle. Drop a small amount of peanut butter mixture in the center, and wrap the chocolate dough around it, using more dough if needed, to seal up the peanut butter mixture completely. Repeat for each cookie.

Place cookies on baking sheet, and bake at 350F for 9-11 minutes. Let cool 1-2 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.